The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for handling electrically or optically conductive insulated wire, and more particularly, concerns improved handling of such wire for various operations such as wire harness assembly.
In the assembly of wire harnesses, groups of electrically or optically conductive wires or filaments having terminals or terminal pins secured to their ends are inserted into apertures in connectors. For assembly of the wire harness, lengths of wire are cut, ends stripped, and terminal pins are secured to the ends. Thereafter, individual lengths of wire are transported to an assembly area where the harness is assembled by inserting the terminal pins into multi-pin connectors and laying the wires in bundles extending from one connector to another.
Among the many types of arrangements for handling wires are a variety of wire reels and spools or spool holding devices. Such arrangements do not readily lend themselves to rapid and efficient harness assembly or other wire processing or handling operations, and do not readily lend themselves for automatic harness assembly.
In a system described in my prior patent application for Wire Processing Method and Apparatus, Ser. No. 615,933, Filed May 31, 1984, the disclosure of which is incorporated by this reference as though fully set forth herein, there are described methods and apparatus for preparing wire for harness assembly. In the apparatus and method described in this prior application, each wire that is formed for assembly into a harness is individually wound on a separate reel and cut to a predetermined length, with both ends of the wire projecting from between the resilient peripheral lips of the reel. The projecting wire ends are grasped and clamped in conveyor mounted clamps which move the reel together with the wire wound thereon to various end finishing stations at which the wire ends are stripped and terminal pins attached. Terminated wires wound on the reel then may be fed to a machine for automatic terminal insertion, such as for example, the apparatus illustrated in my co-pending application for Method and Apparatus for Terminal Insertion, Ser. No. 646,949, Filed Sept. 4, 1984, where the wire ends are automatically inserted into desired multi-pin connectors. For certain applications, however, it may not be desired to employ apparatus capable of inserting both ends of a wire into a connector, or it may be desired to manually insert an end of the wire into a connector. Further, it may be desirable to handle groups of wires and their reels either individually or collectively as a unit. The reels, with wire wound thereon, must also be stored, stacked and handled for various types of processing or assembly operations.
Where wire is wound upon a reel and has an end protruding between resilient lips of the reel, the sides of the reel are necessarily expanded to some extent by the diameter of the protruding wire. This prevents a number of reels from being stacked upon each other without a progressively increasing tilt of the stack. Stack tilt may interfere with the operation to be carried out on the wire of reels in a tilted stack.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide methods and apparatus that facilitate handling, transport and storage of wire for various types of processing and assembly operations.
The term wire is used herein to denote both electrical wires, comprising metallic or similar electrical conductors covered with insulation, and also, optical fibers, used for transmission of optical signals. Such optical fibers are provided with terminal pins that enable their insertion into connector elements that maybe quite similar to the multi-pin connector elements employed for electrical wires.